We are intolerant, we are out of control … we must be dealt with

Friday, 13 June 2014 05:52

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  By G.A.Ponsonby

If Pat Lally has a daughter-in-law then she’s probably hoping the brouhaha over Campbell Gunn’s email blows over soon so that she can come out of hiding.

I’ve watched the latest media circus with a wry smile as yet another one of my end-of-year predictions comes true.

Campbell Gunn is a name that few out-with the political arena would have heard of, so too Clare Lally.  But anyone who has picked up a paper or turned on a TV or radio this week will know that these two people are at the centre of a quite extraordinary media frenzy.

Let’s get one thing straight before going any further.  Campbell Gunn’s email to a Telegraph journalist was ill-judged.  Not because Clare Lally isn’t Pat Lally’s daughter-in-law, but because there was no need for it.

Better Together was busy tearing itself apart with Brown resurrecting his legendary sulk and taking swipes at his No colleagues.  Darling had gaffed badly with his appalling interview which implied a Nazi style culture at the heart of the SNP.

If ever there was a time to stand back and watch the anti-independence campaign self-destruct then it was now.

That said, I can well understand why Gunn – a top quality journalist – may have felt frustrated at the portrayal of Clare Lally as an ‘ordinary mum’.

Lally described herself in just such a fashion at last week’s Better Together event.  But she was being less than honest, as were the reporters who duly portrayed her using similar terms.

Most people of course would equate ‘ordinary’ with someone who has no significant political links with any party or organisation.

Lally of course was anything but ordinary we have now learned.  She appears to have had contact with top officials within the Labour party for several years.  In 2011 she introduced onto the stage at a party event, current Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont.

Moreover, Lally has been a member of the Scottish Labour Shadow cabinet for fully two years.

No-one is suggesting that this hard working mum should not be allowed to campaign on behalf of Labour or Better Together, but nobody from the No campaign has admitted Ms Lally rather misrepresented her own political situation.

An ‘ordinary’ mum would have accepted Campbell Gunn’s gracious and unreserved apology with good grace.  Lally publicly rejected the offer and then went on national TV to complain, allowing her children to be filmed in the process.

The issue has of course allowed the usual suspects to resurrect one of the Unionists most oft repeated canards regarding the referendum – that only independence supporters indulge in online abuse.

It’s a lie of course and they know it.  But Unionists own and control the media and they set the news agenda.  It helps the No campaign if they can destroy the debate and present the actions of an insignificant minority from both sides as coming from only one side.

The SNP provide so little by way of political blunders and inappropriate comment that the so-called ‘cybernats’ are their only source of material.

When a chink appears in the armour of the Scottish Government, the media send in everything they’ve got.  They become so fixated on their SNP prey that they lose all sense of proportion – the story eats itself and grows.

Thus, an email which mistook Lally as a relative of a former Glasgow Provost of the same name explodes super-nova like, generating more heat than its mass initially contained.  The whole media machine gorges on the energy, consuming each another’s exaggerated interpretations of actuality they create an ever increasing self-confirming circle.

Blinded by the light and fixated utterly on the hype of their own creation, the media are rendered incapable of employing logic and reason to provide a check to the ever fantastical claims by pro-union figures.

I watched and listened as serving Labour and Conservative MPs and MSPs levelled quite extraordinary, some extreme, accusations against the First Minister.

Margaret Curran was banshee like as she accused Alex Salmond of having orchestrated online attacks against pro-Union figures.  Johann Lamont made a similar accusation in the Holyrood chamber.

Former advisor to Tony Blair, John McTernan, launched a similar attack against Herald journalist Iain MacWhirter on STV.  The aforementioned Margaret Curran attacked the reporter online, accusing him of misogyny.

The reporting has been awful, with the BBC as expected right at the heart.  The result of this misreporting by the media is that Yes supporters are now being portrayed as somehow less than normal, a threat to society… we are illegitimate.

There is an attempt at depicting the Yes movement as an almost terrorist like organisation, seeking out opponents online and issuing threats.  The head of this mythical new terrorist beast, whose sole aim is to silence dissent, is Alex Salmond.

If Salmond is to be depicted as orchestrating a campaign of online terrorism then by extension, since the BBC and others depict the Yes movement as his movement then we are all now terrorists.

This of course is the aim of the British nationalist media, to try to persuade ordinary Scots that the independence movement is built on fear and intimidation. It’s an extension of Alistair Darling’s linking of the SNP to Nazism and the portrayal of Salmond by Darling and others as a dictator.

The irony of course is that people are now afraid to voice their opinions in the feral atmosphere.

But it isn’t No campaigners who are reluctant to voice concerns.  It is not the British nationalists who face being attacked, vilified and demonised by the pro-Union media if they dare question the tactics of the ultra-British Nationalists who are leading the No campaign.

This week marked a change in the referendum campaign.  It marked the turning point for the ultra-British nationalists who control our media.

The Yes movement is being demonised.  Those of us who back independence are being portrayed as intolerant and devoid of normal human traits.

We are not to be trusted.  We are dangerous and a threat to ‘normal’ people.

We are now officially less than them.

They have been patient with us.

They will now deal with us.